A weekly podcast tracing the history of the Roman Empire, beginning with Aeneas's arrival in Italy
and ending with the exile of Romulus Augustulus,
last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire. Now complete!

Its good to hear that you are recovering, Inshallah (God Willing) you ll recover to 100% within days. Take care and Thanks for your valuable work; you should be classified as Polybius and Livy of contemporary times. :)Keeping alive the traditions of ancient story-telling. Love you. Take care and get well soon.

It's a relief to have the podcast back. It's hard to picture Christians and pagans existing in a situation where Christians would placate pagans with their symbols returned to the Senate building. I think after you dispatch Arbogast that we need a cultural episodes to illustrate just what the western and eastern cultures looked like.

BTW, I thought Romans committed suicide by short sword. Is hanging a new custom, or just convenient for Valentinian II?

I have a question on something you said in this week's podcast. You said that Arbogast knew he couldn't become emperor himself, due to the fact that he was a Frank. But why should that stop him? Everyone in the empire has been a citizen since 212, right? And emperors have come from all over the place, from Spain, Illyria, Africa, and beyond. Is there some sort of perhaps new institutionalized racism in the Roman empire at this point in history?

great podcast as usual.. take care mike.. and Niel has a point there.. even i was wondering about why Arbogast couldnt be an emperor if he had the army and most of the administrators of the western empire at his disposal? hope you are feeling much better now..cant wait for the next one but already sad now that tis coming to an end.. it's been a very pleasurable and wonderful journey for last 2 years.. thank you so much!

i'm not ready for the fall of rome :(. I'm a 16yr old from pennsylvania been following your podcast since around the Aurelian's walls episode. Love your podcast, hope you feel alright without that appendix too.

I actually stumbled on this series shortly after returning from Rome. The next time I am there I will embrace it with much greater appreciation. I've thoroughly enjoyed the series,... hell, the epic, verbal monument. Thank you for this.

Mike, hope you're back to full strength, we need your work! On a different note, I was wondering if you could say a few lines on what the linguistic map of the empire looked like during this time. Was it Latin west/Greek east? How deep were the divisions between what was spoken in Gaul/Hispania/Africa/etc?